All of us gamers have a story of choosing to play a video game rather than meeting our societal obligations of spending time with other people. Sometimes these stories even involve not wanting to go outside. How can games have such a hold on us? And is it a design flaw in them -- one that needs to be corrected -- that makes this so?
A little over a week ago I found out that my wife wouldn't be home the following Monday, a first in our very young marriage. She was going to Pennyslvania to celebrate her brother's 21st birthday.
I was sorry to see her go. That was my first thought. My second: ditch dinner plans with my friend Matt so I could stay home and binge on "Final Fantasy XII." Sorry, Matt!
He said he understood. The problem is: I didn't.
I had started "FFXII" about a week before, diving in for nine hours during a few focused play sessions. I didn't expect to become enraptured with the game. I'd played up to the final boss of "Final Fantasy X," and sampled a few hours of the "Final Fantasy IV" re-make on the Game Boy Advance. I had played tiny bits of "Final Fantasy VIII" and "IX" years ago on a friend's PSOne. I also spent many hours on "Final Fantasy Tactics Advance" on the GBA. I wasn't blown away by any of them, and only played "X" as long as I did so that I could say I gave the popular franchise a fair shake.
Still, number "XII" had been praised so highly I had to give it a try. I'm glad I did. The game's designers solved my two biggest reservations about the series. They canned the franchise's traditional turn-based, random-encounter combat in favor of real-time, semi-automated, "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic"-style fighting. And they replaced their typically emotionally immature whiny wracked-with-dad-issues protagonist for a likable young guy caught up in a web of political intrigue (in a plot that pilfers shamelessly but stylishly from the "Star Wars" movies).
What they didn't change was the game's duration, which even in the early stages looked to stretch to 60 hours and beyond. That's the kind of discovery that gives me looming dread. I don't have that kind of time for a game these days. But when a game hooks me, I want to give it that much time. And so the stress develops: my loyalty to the game vs. my loyalty to everything else. If you're not a gamer, this probably sounds absurd. But if you are you know the feeling. And there's a twist to this feeling, at least for me: the ever-present notion that maybe the game isn't really worth that kind of commitment.
Recently I've been hooked by "Pokémon: Pearl" and "Odin Sphere." I said as much here and here. But my immediate days-long obsessions with those games were recently followed by a week off from each, first from "Pokémon," then from "Odin Sphere." In both cases my fixation was replaced with relaxation. I didn't mind not playing them. Think of the different states of mind of eating potato chips. There's that moment, hand in bag, when eating a fifth chip seems like the best next thing to do, then a sixth, then a seventh. Then there's that moment an hour after you stop eating them when you realize you're not hooked and didn't really need to be in the first place.
How do we tell when a video game is worth playing through or when it's just a bag of potato chips that you don't really need to finish? How do we know when the game is really worth cancelling dinner plans with your friend Matt? Taking a break is a good idea. I'm about to have a week off from "Final Fantasy XII," because I'll be in Santa Monica, PS2-less, covering E3.
Oh, but here's one more twist regarding "FFXII." It may be one of those games that demands a lot of the player's time. But it does so in a strange way. The semi-automated battle system lets you assign default fighting orders to your team. You can tell Vaan to always swing his sword at the nearest enemy and Ashe to always heal anyone in the three-character party who's health meter drops below 30%. What this meant on the Monday I ditched Matt was that, after sitting down, turning the game on, and sending my "FF" guys into battle, I was able to walk into my kitchen and cook dinner. My guys fought well without me. For a game that demands so much of my time, it sure doesn't actually need me to pay it much attention.
Kind of like a house cat, I guess.
Chosen "Final Fantasy" Over a Friend. That's a Thing I've Done.
(Recent Thing I've Also Done: Tested the Bad-Mood/Bad-Score Theory.)